“They are really against war because they want all of that money to go to food stamps for people here.” (AUDIO-AT-LINK)Former Republican Rep. Ron Paul, the father of potential presidential candidate Rand Paul and a former presidential candidate himself, said the Congressional Black Caucus does not support war because they want that money for food stamps. “I was always annoyed with it in Congress because we had an anti-war unofficial group, a few libertarian Republicans and generally the Black Caucus and others did not—they are really against war because they want all of that money to go to food stamps...

Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says secession is happening and it’s “good news.” Paul later predicted the states would stop listening to federal laws. “I would like to start off by talking about the subject and the subject is secession and, uh, nullification, the breaking up of government, and the good news is it’s gonna happen. It’s happening,” Paul, the father of potential Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, told a gathering at the libertarian Mises Institute in late January. The event Paul was speaking at was titled “Breaking Away: The Case for Secession.” Paul said secession would...

Fun stuff via BuzzFeed, portending an exciting “whose close relative is more of a devastating electoral liability?” primary for the GOP if the two men left standing are Jeb Bush and Rand Paul. I don’t understand this even within the parameters of the Ron Paul worldview. I thought hardcore isolationists — sorry, “non-interventionists” — believe that the war machine will always find a new pretext to keep rolling even if the current one goes bust. Obama, for instance, did eventually get Bin Laden, along with many other Al Qaeda capos … and yet at this very moment there’s an AUMF...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has a Ron Paul problem. Or maybe it's a Ron Paul opportunity. Both sides of that particular coin were on display Friday, when Ron - Rand's father - spoke to the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, DC. It was the elder Paul's kind of audience - young and enthusiastic about the libertarian emphasis on robust individual freedoms and miniscule government. Crowds like this had fervently supported the former congressman's quixotic bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012, where he proved to be a pesky participant in the debates and a headache...

Senator Rand Paul is calling for a declaration of war against the Islamic State, a move that promises to shake up the debate over the military campaign in Iraq and Syria as President Obama prepares to ask Congress to grant him formal authority to use force. Mr. Paul, a likely presidential candidate who has emerged as one of the Republican Party’s most cautious voices on military intervention, offered a very circumscribed definition of war in his proposal, which he outlined in an interview on Saturday. He would, for instance, limit the duration of military action to one year and significantly...

The authorization for the use of military force against ISIS that the Obama administration sent Congress this week is not worthy of the name. Its language is far more about what the president won’t do against the terrorist army that controls much of Syria and Iraq—limits on ground troops and a sunset provision for the authorization after three years—than what he will do. Congress should reject it. If the threat of ISIS is as dire as the president says it is in the preamble of his resolution, if ISIS really does pose “a grave threat to the people and territorial...

HOUSTON — Rand Paul wants to lead the United States. On Saturday in Texas, his father was speaking at a conference about how to leave it. “A lot of times people think secession, they paint it as an absolute negative,” said former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. After all, Paul said, the American Revolution was a kind of secession. “You mean we should have been obedient to the king forever? So it’s all in the way you look at it.” This weekend was a crucial one for Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky and un­declared candidate for the presidency. He...

Rand Paul has a lot going for him. He inspires the conservative and libertarian wings of the Republican Party. In many ways he’s a breath of fresh air because he’s different than the rest of the GOP. He’s trying to work with constituencies that the GOP normally ignores. He’s making policy arguments that are different than other Republicans and different from other conservatives or libertarians. Rand Paul is personable, which goes a long way on the presidential campaign trail. Rand Paul can unite the right in the GOP. He has the brashness of Ted Cruz and the values of a...

Tea Party champion and conservative firebrand Ted Cruz may be ready to embrace his libertarian side – and he may need to, if he hopes to find a path from Iowa to the White House. As it turns out, the death of the Liberty Movement in Iowa may have been greatly exaggerated. While an establishment resurgence in 2014 spearheaded by Governor Terry Branstad succeeded in purging the Ron Paul element from the leadership of the Republican Party of Iowa, members of the state’s robust and often-boisterous Liberty Movement are turning their attention to greater things – namely, the 2016 presidential...

If Rand Paul wants to have any chance of running for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, not to mention the presidency itself, there is one thing he needs to do immediately. Tell Dad to shut up. In response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Ron Paul took a break from his usual blame-America-first rhetoric to blame France first. On an internet television show, Paul the Elder declared, “France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs in Libya, and they really prodded us along in—recently in Libya, but they’ve been...

In an interview with talk show host Sean Hannity, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sounded more equivocal about a presidential run than at any time in the last year or so: “If the ideas are resonating — if the ideas look like they have a chance – then it’s much more likely that I’ll make a go of this. If it looks like we’re at 1 percent, we’re not in the top tier, and it’s just going to be a quixotic sort of run, then I think it’s not something I want to do just for educational purposes. I would do...

I try to ignore Ron Paul and his spawn as much as humanly possible but sometimes the doddering old fraud just goes too far. As a recap, Muslim terrorists, or at least everyone in the world thinks they are Muslim terrorists except the Obama administration, stormed the offices of a Parisian magazine that happens to poke fun at Islam and its Mohammed. People were killed. What lesson does Ron Paul draw from this? The French had it coming:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) “But in the context of things, France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs...

In remarks this morning from Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry said he agreed with the French imam who called the victims of today's murderous rampage in Paris "martyrs for liberty." Video at link.

France was on high alert on Thursday the day after a terror attack on a satirical magazine left 12 dead. Muslim leaders have condemned the shootings, but fear there may be a backlash. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The French government has placed the country on the highest state of terror alert after an attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo left 12 dead, including two police. Extra security forces were drafted in to secure mosques, synagogues, department stores, shopping centres, train stations and airports, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. Paris announced that an extra 650 soldiers and 2,000 more police officers will...

The Associated Press is among the numerous news outlets that have been self-censoring images of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that may have provoked Wednesday's deadly Paris attack. In a statement, the news organization said that such censorship is standard policy: None of the images distributed by AP showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images. The conservative Washington Examiner publication then pointed out that the AP nonetheless continued to carry an image of Andres Serrano's 1987 "Piss Christ" photograph—which is certainly provocative, having been the subject of massive...

Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says bad foreign policy is to blame for the Paris terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left at least 12 dead and 11 wounded. “Well, you know, partially what the Secretary of State said is true — this is pretty obscene, when it comes to violence, and libertarians are pretty annoyed by anybody who initiates violence,” said Paul on NewsMaxTV’s Steve Malzberg Show Wednesday. “This is pretty bad.” Paul said the context for the attack, however, was France’s involvement in the Middle East. “But in the context of things,...

Occupy may be gone, but it is clearly not forgotten. The people protesting Eric Garner’s death in New York City were marching to a slightly different drum beat in 2011, but they seem to have returned, having learned something from their previous mistakes.

While both the Ukrainian and Russian governments continue to point fingers at one another for the MH17 crash, former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) urged caution Friday against jumping to any conclusions about where blame lies. Some American pundits accuse Vladimir Putin of having “blood on his hands” since the missile that took down the Malaysia Airlines flight may have been a Russian weapon given to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. Speaking with Newsmax TV’s John Bachman earlier today, Paul said “Putin is a little bit smarter than that. I don’t think he would ever come close to participating in an act...

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said his support for a filibuster against Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel never meant that he would vote against Hagel's confirmation. "I voted no because I wanted more information and I think that part of what the Senate does is try to get information about the nominees," Paul told reporters in the basement of the Capitol after Hagel's confirmation Tuesday. "I've said all along that I give the president some prerogative in choosing his political appointees." "There are many things I disagree with Chuck Hagel on, there are many things I disagree with John Kerry...

Paul is the first potential 2016 contender to visit the city.Sen. Rand Paul met with civil rights leaders Friday in Ferguson, Missouri, the city torn apart by racial unrest following the August shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer. During his visit, the Republican Senator, who is seen as a likely presidential candidate, stated his concerns about long prison sentences for nonviolent crimes, the loss of voting rights for felons and military programs to give unused equipment to local police departments. “I wanted to find out what we could do to make the situation better,” Paul...

Sen. Rand Paul is blaming politicians for the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, arguing that the criminal justice system fuels racial tension by disproportionately targeting African-Americans. The so-called war on drugs has created a culture of violence and put police in a nearly impossible situation," Paul said in an op-ed published for TIME. He acknowledged that the shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer wasn't related to drugs, but argued that outsized penalties for nonviolent drug crimes creates a "tension in some communities that too often results in tragedy." The comments are another attempt by Paul, a Kentucky...

Now that the Ferguson grand jury documents have been made public, even MSNBC has had to quietly drop its fantasy of Michael Brown being gunned down like a dog in the street by Officer Darren Wilson. Instead, MSNBC is defending the looters. On Monday night, MSNBC's Chris Hayes objected to anyone referring to the people who "set fires or looted as 'thugs.'" His guest, former Seattle chief of police Norm Stamper, said, "I could not agree more." (Stamper did such a bang-up job dealing with the World Trade Organization riots in 1999 that he was forced to resign -- which...

A long time ago, on an island not too far away, a pair of brothers was ejected from a good Jesuit school. The one was reportedly a better student, the other less impressive, but together, they preferred other things – politics, rabble-rousing, war. When the brothers grew up, they fell in with a bad crowd – the worst of crowds, in fact. Far across the oceans, Chinese communists were consolidating their power, Soviet communists were drawing an iron curtain down the center of Europe, Korean communists were settling in for the long haul in Pyongyang, Vietnamese communists were revolting against...

There may be disagreements on foreign policy among conservatives, but one thing that there's near universal agreement on is that President Obama's foreign policy has been an abysmal failure. That's why it was especially noteworthy that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., already facing an uphill battle in winning over conservative primary voters on foreign policy, has embraced the disastrous, John Kerry-led negotiations with the radical Islamic Iranian regime. Speaking at a meeting sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Paul said he doesn’t favor increasing sanctions on Iran as the U.S. continues diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the Iranian nuclear weapons...

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday that starting to trade with Cuba "is probably a good idea" and that the lengthy economic embargo against the communist island "just hasn't worked." Paul became the first potential Republican presidential candidate to offer some support for President Barack Obama's decision to try to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba. The president's surprise announcement on Wednesday was slammed by several potential GOP candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who said it amounted to appeasing the Castro regime. Paul said in a radio interview with Tom Roten of...

Sen. Rand Paul broke with the field of Republicans considering a 2016 presidential run on Thursday, calling President Barack Obama's decision to normalize relations with Cuba a "good idea" since the American embargo against Cuba "just hasn't worked." Paul, a likely presidential candidate, made the remarks in an interview with News Talk 800 WVHU's Tom Roten, just a day after his potential competitors for the Republican nomination -- former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz -- slammed the decision to normalize relations as a dangerous move. Rubio and Cruz are sons of Cuban immigrants. Paul...

Rand Paul Breaks With Rubio and Bush Over Cuba Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is the latest potential presidential candidate to weigh in on policy changes to Cuba and the libertarian leaning Republican's position splits from other Republicans who are also considering a presidential run. Paul told Tom Roten of News Talk 800 in West Virginia that the 50-year embargo "just hasn't worked" and normalizing relations with the island nation is "probably a good idea." "If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime...

Via Mediaite, an easy lay-up here for a guy who (a) warned the world about Saddamâ€™s WMD threat more than once as president, (b) cautiously declined to take a firm position against the war at the time, and (c) is of course married to someone who cast a vote in the Senate to invade.But never mind that. This is an interesting counterfactual: What would have happened to Iraq during the Arab Spring and Syrian uprising if Saddam had endured? Clinton implicitly assumes that ISIS advancing on Baghdad is the worst possible outcome of the past 10 years, which is...

A heavyweight lineup of former national security officials banded together late Tuesday to accuse Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) president Grover Norquist and high-ranking GOP political operative Suhail Khan of connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The officials authored a 45-page dossier on the issue to Cleta Mitchell, the top lawyer for the American Conservatives’ Union who in 2011 cleared Norquist of the allegations initially brought by former high-ranking Reagan official Frank Gaffney. The signatories include numerous powerful and respected former officials, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Florida Rep. Allen West, retired Army Lt....

Supports the efforts by President Poroshenko and the people of Ukraine to establish a lasting peace for Ukraine that includes: full withdrawal of Russian forces from its territory, full control of its international borders, disarming of separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine, adoption of policies to reduce the Russian Federation's ability to use energy exports and trade barriers as weapons to apply economic and political pressure, and an end to interference by the Russian Federation in Ukraine's internal affairs.

Washington (CNN) -- The New York officer involved in the death of Eric Garner should no longer be on the police force, Sen. Rand Paul argued Monday. The Kentucky Republican said Daniel Pantaleo lacked "discretion" when he placed Garner in a chokehold for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes.

Last week the US House voted overwhelmingly in favor of an anti-Russia resolution so full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from chilliest era of the Cold War. Ironically, much of the bill condemns Russia for doing exactly what the US government has been doing for years in Syria and Ukraine. For example, one of the reasons to condemn Russia in the resolution is the claim that Russia is imposing economic sanctions on Ukraine. But how many rounds of sanctions has US government imposed on Russia for much of the past year? I guess sanctions are only bad...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., -- In an exclusive interview with FTMDaily's (http://ftmdaily.com/) Jerry Robinson, former Congressman Ron Paul discusses some of his core values as an American and as a human being. "On Faith and Family: A Conversation With Dr. Ron Paul" provides compelling insight on the problems facing the nation today, as well as reflections on Paul's three presidential campaigns. Paul explained that war and strong-arm diplomacy, both part of America's compulsion to police the world, are fundamentally unsound policies. Most disturbingly, he said, is that a vocal minority of the Christian Evangelical community is strongly in favor of such foreign...

Hate Preached In Harlem: Nation of Islam Leader Farrakhan Says Fort Hood Shooter Is Not a Terrorist Just a Good Muslim Who Was Driven Crazy By The Terrorist American Soldiers Who Rape Muslim Men, Woman & Families http://www.theblaze.com/stories/hate-preached-in-harlem-nation-of-islam-leader-farrakhan-says-fort-hood-shooter-is-not-a-terrorist-just-a-good-muslim-who-was-driven-crazy-by-the-terrorist-american-soldiers-who-rape-muslim-men-woma/

Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R) offered support for some of the Occupy Wall Street protests that have built up in lower Manhattan over the weekend in an interview Friday with Reason magazine, where he also denounced the "militarization of our police forces." "If they were demonstrating peacefully, and making a point, and arguing our case, and drawing attention to the Fed — I would say, good!" Paul said following a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire. Paul has long been an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve, which he says manipulates American currency and is excessively secretive.

In a development that may portend extended disruptions, veteran street organizer Lisa Fithian, previously dubbed “Professor Occupy,” recently trained Ferguson protesters how to “simulate chaos.” Fithian is a legendary organizer who once announced she seeks to “create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.” She was one of the luminaries of the Occupy Wall Street movement and was a lead organizer in the infamous 1999 Seattle riots against the World Trade Organization that descended into violence. The 1999 WTO event in Seattle devolved into widespread rioting in which more than 40,000 protesters, some using violent tactics, descended...

The video appears on the website of Voices of Liberty, a group led by former Republican congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. It lobbies against "unjustified wars, unconstitutional surveillance, [and] extrajudicial drone assassinations," according to its website.

Veterans Day was initially called Armistice Day to celebrate the end of World War I and recognize the soldiers who died. Today it’s a day in the United States to recognize all veterans in all wars—not just those who died or were wounded or even served in a war at all. It’s designed to heap praise and adulation on all things military. In doing so, in the name of patriotism, it therefore endorses all of our war policies, right or wrong. Every veteran becomes a hero and no questions are to be asked of the wisdom, morality, or constitutionality of...

It's been a pretty good election night for Republicans so far. That means that, naturally, former GOP member of Congress and general gadfly Ron Paul decided to rain on the parade: Ron Paul âś” @RonPaul Republican control of the Senate = expanded neocon wars in Syria and Iraq. Boots on the ground are coming! 7:34 PM - 4 Nov 2014 1,168 Retweets 524 favorites On a night when most of his former party is celebrating its moves toward taking the Senate, Paul is bemoaning the idea of a Republican takeover on grounds that it'll lead to more wars in the...

Rand Paul, the heretofore libertarian senator from Kentucky, gave a foreign policy speech to Republican grandees in New York last week with a clear message: I'm not an isolationist like my dad.. The senator's peppery father, the thoroughly libertarian former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, hardly ever saw a U.S. military intervention he liked. He said George W. Bush's war in Iraq was nuts, suggested that the United States could live with a nuclear Iran and thought stationing U.S. troops overseas was just an expensive way to invite trouble. On Thursday evening in a Manhattan ballroom, Sen. Paul, a probable...

Bilderbergers, the Iraq invasion, Alex Jones—the GOP senator has routinely flirted with America's paranoid fringe.This past summer, Rand Paul, the libertarian senator from Kentucky and a potential 2016 presidential wannabe, was the GOP's It Girl. The New York Times Magazine splashed his mug on the cover and asked, "Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?" It noted that Paul possessed a "supple mind" and was a "preternaturally confident speaker." Washington Post political prognosticator Chris Cillizza pronounced Paul the "most interesting voice in the GOP right now," and Politico gave him the No. 1 spot on its list of the 50 "most...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Friday he remains deeply skeptical about President Obama’s ability to prevent an Ebola outbreak in the U.S., claiming that federal health officials are still underplaying the risks. Paul said while he doesn’t want the government to incite panic over Ebola, he doesn’t believe the administration has been entirely transparent about the threat. "I understand people in government not wanting to create panic, and I don't want to create panic, either. But I think it's also a mistake on the other side of the coin to underplay the risk of this,” Paul told CNN's Wolf Blitzer....

I’ve had my fill of the pleas for money that have been filling up my email in-box, and that’s saying something – as a lawyer, I usually have a great respect for people demanding money. This is bipartisan insanity – both sides are going nuts. I’m getting stuff that’s clearly not meant for me. Just take a look at what came in earlier today – I think somebody mad at my conservative Twitter musings put me on a list for Democrat millennials. I’m just not sure the Democrats truly get know their target demographic: From: Joe Biden Subject: Bro, I...

Al Gore was driven (further) insane when he lost to GWB in 2000, going from a man who attacked Bush #41 in 1992 for not removing Saddam Hussein from power, to demonizing Bush #43 for removing Saddam Hussein from power, and smearing his supporters as “digital brownshirts.” Gore, whose political career was reborn in 1989, when he made an about-face from a relatively conservative Democrat in the 1980s to comparing global warming to “An Ecological Kristallnacht” in a New York Times op-ed, sold his Current TV channel to Al Jazeera, owned by the ISIS-funding petro-state Qatar for $500 million at...

The Texas senator stands for conservative principles. Unfortunately, that's all he does with them.Is Ted Cruz good for conservatives? Or is it the other way around? The answer matters a lot, because it's not impossible that this guy could be the next GOP presidential nominee. A close adviser to Texas' junior senator told National Journal that there is a 90 percent chance the Tea Party star will run for president in 2016. "And honestly, 90 is lowballing it." Cruz denies that he has made plans past the midterms. But boy, he sure does look like a man preparing for a...

Sen. Rand Paul's best window for winning the 2016 Republican presidential nomination increasingly looks like it has passed. A lot can happen over the next 18 months, but the renewed focus on foreign policy -- and more specifically, the Islamic State -- has reminded the Republican Party where its true views on international affairs lie. And it is decidedly not with non-interventionists like Paul (R-Ky.). A new poll from CNN/Opinion Research is the best we've seen to date bearing out this point. The poll asks Americans to identify themselves as either hawks or doves -- hawks being someone "who believes...

I’m blown away. Not because McCain is saying he’d back Paul in 2016 as the nominee; of course he’s going to say that while he’s thinking of running again for Senate in Arizona. What blows me away is his reasons for saying so. The great fear among hawks is that, for all of Rand’s posturing lately about destroying ISIS and standing up to Russia, there’s little daylight on foreign policy between him and Ron Paul. No matter how hawkish Rand gets during the primaries, that’s the trump card that rivals like Rubio and Cruz can and will play on him:...